Green German gov battles to keep fossil powerplants running The German government is engaged in increasingly heated negotiations with energy companies in an effort to stop them closing carbon-emitting power plants which have been rendered unprofitable by the national renewables policies. Last week power giant RWE grumbled that many of its coal and gas power stations "are no longer …
German solar-energy costs are four times that of an expensive new nuclear plant. The two new nuclear power plants in Finland produce as much energy as the entire solar energy sector in Germany.
The so-called environmental lobby is killing European industry. Energy prices in countries pushing the renewable fairytale are skyrocketing compared to that of countries with more sane energy policies.
Probably has something to do with being on the front line of a potential nuclear war for 50 years. Also West Berlin served as an incubator for many different ideologies & world views.
I love the Green's. NUKES BAD during cold war era, fair enough if thats your view. Now with rising energy costs, more people to feed (and keep at a higher standard of living) and less resources to do it with nuclear power is now a greener alternative in most of the west.
However 40 odd years of "NUKES BAD" means the Greens will not listen no matter what argument (less co2,price etc) is put forward. Simply put if it ain't renewable they won't back it. Even if renewable means panels, shipped from China, that only produce energy 50% of the time and struggle to pay back the energy cost to make them. Oh and that Chinese energy used to make them? Comes from coal with no scrubbers and not just normal coal i imagine the Chinese still use the crap coal the DDR used to use which is even worse.
Germany could go for Greenpeaces ex-founders solution of wood burning (with replanting behind) but the Greens will protest that despite it being carbon negative (burn 1, plant 2) as you cannot cut tree's down EVER!
I wonder how that Green MP got from Brighton to the fracking site? must of been a long ass bike ride!
Germany could go for Greenpeaces ex-founders solution of wood burning (with replanting behind)...
Georgia (the US state, not the nation) is doing just this. They are moving to wood-burning power plants in conjunction with wind in a state that is firmly to the right of political center. It makes financial sense. Whether this would also work for Germany is beyond me, but it can be done.
@Destroy: This is open to more historical analysis but more or less the following happened:
* The green movement in Germany started in force as an antiwar / anti nuclear armament movement. This was in the beginning of the 80's nuclear arms races. Classic German joke at the time: How far are German cities apart? One megaton.
* The antinuclear movement gained momentum because of several nuclear cover ups and highly contagious issues: Nukem in Hanau, reprocessing plant in Bavaria (Wackersdorf) etc.
* In the 90s, measurements for radiation exposure during nuclear transports were covered up.
* There had been several scandals regarding older nuclear plants and the storage facility in Aahaus. One prospective nuclear plant had been planned in an earthquake zone on the Rhine.
In general, it is a vicious circle: Nuclear plants were not shut down due to resistance to the construction of newer plants. These older plants developed problems which were then used as reasons not to build newer and better ones. The nuclear industry did its' share by producing scandals and by being happy to continue to work with the old long depreciated plants, thus increasing profits. Also, many people do not learn enough physics to grasp a basic understanding of nuclear physics.
The costs for nuclear plants always leave out the massive subsidies routinely given to the industry and largely ignore the costs of decommissioning and dealing with the waste. Even then they overrun massively and seeing as you cite Finland: how about the clusterfuck of the recent reactor build there?
The current noises coming from RWE, E.ON, et al. are timed to coincide with the German election and also as part of the ongoing fight about lost profits as a result of the current's government decision initially to extend the lifetime of nuclear power only to turn 180° within a year.
Renewable energy is far from a fairy tale; it is simply a requirement in countries without their own energy reserves. German industry is largely being shielded from price increases which are pushing consumers hard. Indeed some German companies are taking advantage of the situation to produce their own energy. German policy will no doubt be reformed after the election but nuclear is not an option. As retroactively adjusting feed-in tariffs would most likely be legal, electricity is going to continue to get more expensive (at € 0.25 / kWH it's already eye-watering) but plenty of adjustments can and will be made. Shale may well become an option in Europe but even without it, the possibility of synthesising transport fuel using renewable power is starting to look cost effective and would be a good way to handle the surplus production on windy, sunny days.
Furthermore, it's worth noting that even with such expensive electricity, inflation in Germany is significantly below that in the UK, where the chances of the lights going out are even higher despite the pro-nuclear lobby.
All the better for France, which is making money selling "nuclear" electricity to Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Spain and probably Switzerland as well.
I find the current green arguments in Germany quite hypocritical. If they really don't want anything to do with nuclear, then they should not purchase electricity from a country they know produces it via the process they denounce.
Instead, they just pass off as airhead NIMBYs.
Personally, I am pro-ecology. I do not like seeing useless damage to nature and I would prefer that humans in general treat their only home with a bit more respect.
However, I do not expect our society to exist on anything but nuclear energy in the future. We require much to much power to rely only on solar and wind. Fusion will be the savior, when it comes. In the meantime, instead of grumbling about how nuclear is a danger to future generations, let's find a solution. Thorium reactors, for example.
" In the meantime, instead of grumbling about how nuclear is a danger to future generations, let's find a solution. "
It's funny how a fossil fuel plant doesn't have to prove it isn't a danger to future generations (when we all know it is), yet nuclear plants, though they kill fewer people per kilowatt hour than any other mainstream power generating method (yes, and that includes the crappy old plants when they go wrong), have it all to do.
Surely the solution is to stop being hysterical about nuclear power and see it for what it is: the *only* current method to power our civilisation reliably without having to release vast tonnages of carbon into the atmosphere.
@smartypants
It's not (just) about nuclear proving it is safe. It is about the cost. Dounreay hasn't generated a single KWh since 1977 yet it won't be returned to normal site until 2336 (no, that's not a typo).
If you factor in the full lifetime cost of ownership nuclear is expensive. Your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying for your electricity today.
"If you factor in the full lifetime cost of ownership nuclear is expensive. Your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying for your electricity today."
Dounreay? You cite Dounreay? Do you really think that the bellweather standard of how cost effective a nuclear plant can be to run and to decommission?
The choice is simple.
1) Fossil fuels, poisoning the atmosphere with climate changing emissions
2) Nuclear
3) Bye bye to power when we need it for the forseeable future.
Those are your three choices. When talking about costs, please DO factor in the cost of continuing to change the composition of the atmosphere, or the cost of returning us to the effing stone age with daily blackouts.
FFS
Erm... try again. DFR shut down in 1977, but PFR (also at Dounreay and was a 250MWe plant) was shut down by the Tories in 1992 for NO reason at all, apart from they thought it would get them the green vote.
And Dounreay will be decommissioned to an interim end state (all but the sphere and a couple of buildings) by 2025/6. Yes, the sphere and those other buildings will remain for a few hundred years, but they require virtually no maintenance and are not a drain on resources that you seem to imply.
Actually, thinking about it, I'm not sure that the sphere will last even that long before they tear it down.
As to the cost, decommissioning is factored in to every single design these days. And it isn't just "well, in 50 years we'll be able to do THIS!", it is a case of "we can decommission these stations with current techniques and it will cost ££ now and £££ in 50-80 years time." So the price of the leccy that the stations produce ha sthe decommissioning cost factored in. It gets paid to the producer who then puts it into a special decommissioning fund. We used to have one like that run by the government, but Gordon Brown decided that it was a waste to have that money lying there, he spent it instead.
"All the better for France..."
and the Poles - they are building a nuclear power station which will be closer to Berlin than the closest German nuclear power station (now closed down, of course). In return for closing down the nuclear power stations and accepting the prospect of higher prices and increased likelihood of power cuts, the Green party promised that everyone could feel safer - try telling that to Berliners now.
IMHO we (germans) should pass a law forbidding direct or indirect import of power generated by "outlawed" technology (soon nuclear). Granted, that will result in the "winter of dead grandmas" as soon as the "coal generated energy" is also outlawed but that is a small price to pay for getting rid of the Greenies
@mmeier
A law to prevent the import of electricity generated by whatever means would contravene the Single Market and, therefore, never pass. However, what is increasingly likely is getting consumers to buy from utilities that do not buy, say power from French nuclear plants. This is much the same as labelling food as not being genetically modified.
Of course, there are scandals related to this such as hydro-power generated from water storage pushed uphill by nuclear plants. But, over time, the push-pull effect dumping cheap surplus renewables and refusing to buy surplus nuclear power is likely to have a significant effect on surrounding markets: the build-out of both solar and wind in France in the last couple of years is impressive as EDF realises it has to adapt, it is already buying German solar power in the summer which means it needs to worry less about the problems finding water to cool its nuclear stations.
Now that the row about solar panels has been solved with China we can expect continued expansion especially in the areas suitable for solar South of the river Main. By 2020 we could be looking at regular shutdowns of power stations in the summer months. though we will need more for those cold, dark, calm winter days.
@Clark:
I know. But I would very much like to see the Greenies ANSWER for what they are doing to Germany with their stupid plans and ideology. And such a law would prevent the greenwashing.
What we WILL get around 2025 (at the latest) is a nation where:
Industrie that needs reliable and affordable power has left for states like Sweden/Norway (already happening)
Business that needs reliable power (like data centers) end up "everywhere BUT germany) - also already happening
A "nannycraty" that makes "Demolition Man" look like Utopia - google "Eintopfsonntag"<<<<VeggieDay
A nation that is either the laughing stock of europe since it dances around claiming "we use 100 percent clean energy" while buying (at high prices) from outside OR that faces power rationing, brownouts and in the winters a well above west european rate of elderly people dying.
Actually the latter would be preferable since that might result in the greenies getting Hemp delivered free of charge. But it won't be the THC heavy type of hemp...
@Monett
The german Greenies ARE a bunch of NIMBYs with some Luddites and Fanatics thrown in for good measures. To see a nice example of green "intelligence" look up "Datteln 4". Short version:
A new plant (D4) was build to replace three older units at the same site. Some laws/rules where not uphold. Now instead of putting a heavy fine on e.on and change the rules (quite possible) the Red/Green government stopped this because the Greenies screamed "evil, evil, evil" So the three older, dirties and less efficient plants are still operating. Originally only until end of 2012 (Decree of the green Ministry of Environment) now with special permits until 2014.
Now comes the yoke: D1/2/3 (and D4 if it ever goes online) produce power for - The german train system!
About 20 percent of the used power. That's why the greenies where willing to "allow a longer operation time", otherwise their beloved trains would have stopped working.
And don't get me started on the "A30 -> A2 link" in Bad Oeynhausen:
"Umweltschutz für jede Schnecke und der Mensch bleibt auf der Strecke"
This "the possibility of synthesising transport fuel using renewable power is starting to look cost effective" will be one of the most important discoveries ever. Electricity + CO2 + H2O = O2 + fuel
Currently, it is not cost-effective because all the power produced by renewables can be sold on the market. Once renewables become competitive enough to have to compete then dealing with any surplus (unsold) production becomes economical. This might well start to happen before 2020 because LPG is likely to remain significantly cheaper than petrol.
It is time for the operators of the coal fired, gas fired and nuclear power plants to start to shut down. This may cause the price of electricity to increase more but that is the price of progress. Or the government may be required to buy and operate these power plants even at a lose until a method of storing the electricity generated by solar and wind can be developed. Private operators cannot be expected to operate these conventional power generators at a lose so either the government buys them or pays the private companies to operate them more or less on a contract basis. Personally I would prefer for the private operators to get out of the business totally. Let industry (all industry) be operated by the government for the benefit of all. If there is no need to have all the investors to demand a profit then the profit could be used to reduce the tax burden of the citizens of the country. If the trillions of dollars from the private sector was returned to the public health, retirement, and living conditions could be improved for the citizenry of the whole country and at a lower tax rate in addition. There would be no need for unions or strikes because the wages would be guaranteed to each citizen when they come of age.
Very true, but regarding the budget I feel the problem is not with the reality but with an over optimistic original budget and time line. It happens in IT all the time and mostly the feeling is that the original budget was made by good who then fell a sleep and stupid people did not follow his guidelines.
How Areva and Siemens managed to fuck it up I do not know. perhaps they thought Finland is somewhere in Africa with no winter, no regulations, no inspections. no laws and cheap labour. Who knows, they have had problems from the very beginning just trying to build the building. It is the first and most modern plant so far and somehow the "Dreamliner" comes to my mind.
"The so-called environmental lobby is killing European industry. Energy prices in countries pushing the renewable fairytale are skyrocketing "
There's actually nothing wrong with pushing renewables sensibly as long as you have nuclear baseload. What's really screwing the German consumers is (a) too much 'pushing' of renewables. Solar prices are coming down so subsidies and advantages to solar should be reduced accordingly. (b) the nuclear plant closure means baseload capacity has to come 100% from fossil fuels.
Greens cannot have their cake and eat it. they need to choose, fossil fuels or nuclear, they can't have the 'neither' option*. because 'neither' would mean blackouts and 3rd-world standard of living.
*For now at least, and given (non-)advances in other technologies such as fusion, that's going to be the case for a couple hundred years or so.
The green lobby is frequently either ignorant or conveniently forgets about base-load.
Nuclear is great for base-load whereas Solar and Wind energy are never going to be suitable.
What nuclear and coal or bio-mass fire thermal plants are not good at is responding quickly to peak demand. So it's going to have to be CCGT for this. And the network is going to need nearly as much capacity from these plants as it has from intermittent renewables.. Plants which will spend much of their life idle.
Electric demand is inelastic - people just want to turn the lights on, and prices charged are largely a a fixed rate per MWh.
So when you shut down enough thermal plants to supply only 90% of the required power on windless nights, the wholesale cost for power does not merely double, it goes up 10 fold, or more.
California went through this:
"The California electricity crisis, also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001, was a situation in which California had a shortage of electricity caused by market manipulations, illegal shutdowns of pipelines by the Texas energy consortium Enron, and capped retail electricity prices. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
My guess would be that these companies are playing more honestly than the Americans were, so they will try to contain price hikes to an average of 3x or so.
$0.60+ USD per kWh in Germany is the result.
"California went through this"
The snag is, it is not a simple free market in Germany - providers cannot simply pass on wholesale energy price increases to consumers as there are constraints in the maximum price increases that can be applied during a contract.
Germany already does this on a smaller scale. They create hydrogen when there is an energy surplus. This hydrogen is mixed in with the gas fed into peoples homes so they use it to cook and heat their homes.
If they just ramp it up, they can use the energy surplus created by the fossil plants for this, keeping them profitable and while they do create pollution they also help reduce the consumption of natural gas, which largely offsets this pollution.
Electrolysis of water and CO2 is currently too expensive to be competitive with gas as gas, but more than competitive with petrol and diesel when sold as LPG because of the difference in tax treatment. Source, in German pp.5 Of course, tax treatment will change quickly if we all start switching to be LPG!
Also, if shale gas takes off in Europe, or even if the Americans get around to exporting it, the calculations will change again. But often, just the existence of other possibilities is enough to drive down prices: such has already been the effect of shale (and Norwegian) gas on long term contracts with Gazprom. These kind of changes are at the core of dispute of the power oligopoly in Germany: new technologies strongly favour smaller, decentralised production but their business models favour large, centralised production. Expect more propaganda from all sides as this rolls on.
Please explain how burning coal (or, in Germany, more likely lignite) to generate electricity, to split water, to generate hydrogen, to replace methane as a fuel (which produces a fraction of the CO2 emissions of coal, never mind the other junk that burning coal pushes into the atmosphere) "offsets this pollution".
"They create hydrogen when there is an energy surplus. "
Perhaps you'd care to do the calculations? Sadly the end to end efficiency of multiple conversion phases is pitiful, and so renewable hydrogen (using current technologies) is simply irrelevant to grid scale applications. Particularly unhelpful are the energy demands of gas compression and losses on decompression.
Start investing in more sustainable green power.
Replace coal/gas fired power stations with HFR geothermal power stations. The construction costs are similar to coal fired power stations. The running costs are lower than any other type of power station. The footprint on the planet is smaller than any other type of power station. The emmisions are near zero. Thier operation does not create waste products. They provide baseload power 24 hours/day. As a green/renewable powersource they get priority on the grid.
Seriously, this is a solved problem, I wish people stop whining like a bitch and just get on with implementing it.
Geothermal and Germany only share the first two letters. Not much geothermal activities and the last tests at "artificial" geothermals (similar to fracking in the method) where "sub-optimal" to be polite.
Water can do a bit more but try building a dam, a "in river plant" (or even enlarge one) and it's "Greet the Greenie protesters", We had this Müsli recently when an old unit got replaced/enlarged. From the "Luddites" to the "the poor fishies" group all the nuts and flackes where out in force
Hydrogen actually has limits on how much can be added to the CH4 (natural gas) system. So using "green" energy to produce CH4 is a better way. But even that has problems since the pipeline system is not big enough as a storage and the "Greenie special" of the "fast, easily regulated gas fired powerplant" is a myth. Either you burn the stuff in a conventional plant with steam turbines and get basically the same startup times as a coal plant (Heating up the steam is the time consuming part) OR you use what is essentially a gas turbine with all the nice side effects (heat, noise)
Unless someone comes up with a reliable storage that can cover weeks (We had basically six weeks dropout this winter from solar and wind) the classic power plants are needed
Nope, this should be a solved problem, but the Greenies refuse point blank to allow anything other than their current mania. Right now they only want Wind and Solar - everything else is the work of the Devil and Cannot Be Permitted.
The problem is the idiot greenies and BANANAs* who simply aren't interested in solutions, and are intent on shouting down every single attempt at actual solutions because they don't precisely match their fatally flawed preconceptions - flawed because none of them have any idea what "national scale" actually means.
They simply aren't interested in a reasoned discussion of "Here is the problem, what solutions can we afford, how can we move towards the final goal without bankruptcy and death?", they are simply Against. Against what? Well, everything.
The problem of Low-Emissions electricity supply in Europe is relatively easy to solve, if we actually wished to do so. It looks very much like our current mix, just replacing the coal with nuclear. Simples.
Or at least it would be if we'd started building them a few years ago. Now, we're simply utterly screwed.
* Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
Oh yes, Solar-Electric has no place at all in northern Europe. The Sun doth not shine enough here.
We in Germany have forgotten that most of the world is in a much worse situation than we are. So until we are being reminded we'll squander our resources on stupid things like using solar energy in a country that is mostly cloudy. When the other countries catch up with us, we'll be 3 years behind in the energy domain.
And... the European Community plans to count nuclear energy as green: http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/subventionen-fuer-akws-eu-bereitet-die-rueckkehr-der-atomkraft-vor_aid_1047880.html.
So with that all countries in Europe except Germany will have nuclear energy.
Some decisions as a state have to be taken without the influence of the folk.
In fact we're already seeing that in the insistence by potential builders of new nuclear plant for guaranteed prices. Renewable fans claim this shows how expensive nuclear is but what it actually shows is the concern in the industry that wind and solar will get to sell any energy they produce by law AND hoover up ROC payments from other plants leaving no profit left for fossil or nuclear plant.
Renewable policy is forcing other power off the grid when renewables aren't capable of picking up the slack.
Renewable policy is forcing other power off the grid when renewables aren't capable of picking up the slack.
Precisely.
Now maybe the power companies could have managed for another year or two under the current circumstances. But given that politicians tend not to react unless there is a crisis, the power companies have chosen to precipitate the crisis now when it won't wreck too much of the economy as opposed to later when it certainly will.
I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but "Fukushima is actually set to cause no measurable radiation health effects at all)" is a rather disingenuous comment. The reports (and the linked article) actually state that the likely health effects are low enough to be unprovable statistically, which isn't quite the same thing. More importantly the statement implies no significant risk emerged, but the environmental damage is extremely large (do you fancy paying for the clean-up?) and the health effects if everyone went back to their homes in the vicinity would not be statistically undetectable. All of which is reason to think carefully about where you position your nuclear power plants!
Wrote :- "[to say that Fukushima will cause] no measurable radiation health effects at all" is a rather disingenuous comment. The reports (and the linked article) actually state that the likely health effects are low enough to be unprovable statistically, which isn't quite the same thing."
Given the plethora of things around me that DO cause statistically very detectable effects on my life expectancy: like food, road accidents, work accidents, natural disasters and epidemics, I'll go along with their statement.
I feel i got to add here how many people have been killed by fossile fuel powerplants and have measurable side affects such as asthma compared to nuclear, I know fossile fuel power plants aren't renewable but that is what we may have to end up building when the power goes and to be frank I would rather live next to a nuclear powerplant than a Coal one.
I think you miss the point, the lack of a significant health risk is because the people have been removed the risk, not because there is no risk. Anyway, it wasn't a point against using nuclear power it was a comment on the purposefully evasive writing used by the author. Although on the whole that is what I read the Reg for!
The reports (and the linked article) actually state that the likely health effects are low enough to be unprovable statistically, which isn't quite the same thing.
"We can't prove there are any effects, but it seems likely (in our minds) that there will be"...
Why that's as convincing as "We can't prove God exists, but it seems likely (in our minds) that he does".
So when did "belief, despite a complete lack of evidence" become a cornerstone of science?
seems like they should use the "green" energy to drive a turbine, pump water up to a reservoir, then when the power is needed they can let the water flow back down into a lower reservoir and the turbine then generates electricity for the grid, thats one way to "store" the energy on such a scale and by providing power when needed as opposed to when the wind blows then the fossil fuels people are happy as they dont have to switch off and on and the greens arent selectively monopolising the grid.
just a thought
Sadly the energy density of most of the proposed "mass" storage schemes is not even close to being useful to smooth out a heavily renewable based power generation protfolio.
Dinorwig (SP?) only has storage for a few hours at high loads and is the UK's most useful pumped storage site. The volumes of water, compressed air or low grade heat required to store industrial levels of electricity are mind boggling. Fossil fuels are so useful because of the energy density they bring to the party. A 500MW coal power station unit will use circa 150-200 tonnes per hour at full load you need the equivalent of 100-120 such units to meet a typical peak winter demand. Thats upto 20,000 tonnes of coal an hour, all very do able. If you changed that to pumped storage you'd probably have to dam up every U shaped valley in the United Kingdom and turn it into a dam.
The report below demonstrates periods of low renewable supply during high demand periods are not uncommon.
http://www.jmt.org/wind-analysis-report.asp
The moment a decent mass energy storage system is devised I will support mass renewable energy iniatives, until that day I think they are a dangerous irrelavance just pushing up costs for no good reason.
Already done and called Pumpspeicher in german. But it needs a hight difference and a ready supply of water. The combination is not that common in many parts of germany. Not to mention that the Greenies WILL protest any new reservoirs. They did on two occassions in the last 5 years.
"But it needs a hight difference and a ready supply of water. The combination is not that common in many parts of germany"
Presumably not too bad in Bavaria, land of snow, mountains and picturesque valleys...
However, in general agreement that pumped storage is a niche application best suited to planned, short term spikes such as half time at the World Cup and ad breaks in Corrie. Not for the general purpose ironing out of the bumps when the sun stops shining or the wind drops a bit.
"thats one way to "store" the energy". No it is the only way and a rather useless way to do it too. The poor Germans did a "Swede". Before an election the political parties decided they had to be anti nuclear to win the election. There was never any other reasons but the risk of not being elected. So much for mathematics green or the reality. That is now all forgotten shit and one old plant will be shut down.
The Germans have to do the same or is there an upcoming election nearby.
The sad situation is that Germany must now import power that is much less green than before. And the power plants that keep operating are of the cheapest coal-burning kind.
Unfortunately most methods of energy storage are lossy (hydrogen), expensive (batteries), don't scale (most of the innovative ideas) or NIMBY (pumped storage).
BTW, it may be true that nobody was radiation poisoned from the Fukushima accident, but the prolonged evacuation of hundreds of square kilometers comes at a staggering human cost.
The sad situation is that Germany must now import power that is much less green than before.
Yes, but this has been going on ever since energy became tradable across borders. You're also neglecting to say that on sunny, windy days Germany is exporting cheap, clean energy to its neighbours with similar consequences for the conventional fuel plants there.
"BTW, it may be true that nobody was radiation poisoned from the Fukushima accident, but the prolonged evacuation of hundreds of square kilometers comes at a staggering human cost."
As opposed to the staggering human cost of making way for the exploitation of hundreds of square kilometres of tar sands, or setting fire to the subterranea of Pennsylvania. Or the human cost of war that seems to go hand in hand with fossil fuel extraction in parts of Africa and the Middle East....
Just about the most unreliable non fossil "fuels" imaginable.
Biogas, geothermal and micro hydro can run 24/7/365.
Bottom line. Energy is always a regulated market as its a strategic resource.
Germany needs to consider what set of rules it uses and what outcomes it wants.
...because the alternatives you've listed are either so eye-wateringly expensive or difficult to exploit, displace food production, or cannot be easily scaled to the requirements of our modern civilisation that they have not been exploited yet.
Have you any idea of how much power Germany consumes on a cold, dark windless winter night and what that means if you decide you're going to fuel it with biogas?
The UK will slavishly follow. And in this case, having broken their wholesale market and power generation model, their only way out is to raise further subsidies to support thermal power. And that's subsidies on top of the costs of inefficient intermittent operation of fossil to fit in around the random convenience of renewables.
In the UK this will be done (in Ed Davey's wet dreams) by the "Capacity Mechanism". At face value that is being mooted to pay owners of back up plant to peak lop, or large users to load shift, all int he name of "effciency". But actually the biggest element of the Capacity Mechanism is the plan to use this to subsidise thermal plant that DECC's idiotic policy has made uneconomic. So cue continuing costs of renewables subsidies, rising costs of thermal plant, AND new subsidies for thermal plant. In future it will be uneconomic to run any form of power generation without some form of government support, because DECC and the EU have successfully destroyed the power market.
"their only way out is to raise further subsidies to support thermal power"
There are *massive* subsidies for the nuclear industry, the biggest elephant-in-the-room of which is the long-term disposal problem, the costs of which:
- grow
- are nearly always omitted from cost-effectiveness calculations
- are rolled forward, head-in-sand, in the apparent expectation that one day a magic spell will sort it out and nobody will have to pay a penny.
Long term disposal was solved decades ago.
The problem is the "green" activists who refuse point blank to allow the disposal sites to be built, even though the local population want them.
- ref. Sellafield/Windscale.
Nuclear has little to no subsidy - though it is hard to calculate, it's pretty much zero for new plant. (Old plant was subsidised by the military for obvious reasons).
Wind has a massive subsidy and solar has an IMMENSE subsidy - yet both of those added together made up only 14.5% of German electricity during the first half of 2012.*
In 2011, nuclear was 23%. Even after the eight plants were shut down it was still more than wind & solar put together.
* Electricity - Renewable Energies in the first half of 2012
Wrote "for the nuclear industry, the biggest elephant-in-the-room of which is the long-term disposal problem" etc etc
You are just tossing your notions into the ring.
I work within the industry, directly involved in nuclear waste disposal among other things. The problem is not a technical one, it is a political and sociological one. I am not sure what you mean by "omitted from cost-effectiveness calculations" - every engineering project these days is full of such calculations, to the extent that we engineers seem to spend more time talking about cost-effectiveness than engineering.
What is needed is not a magic spell, but some politicians with enough bottle to get on with establishing a nuclear repository. It can be vertically underneath my house if they like, as long as it is deep enough and has enough concrete around it to deter any low tech future society from digging it up, and as long as it is dug from an entrance a few miles away from me - I'd be far more concerned about the construction traffic than radiation.
>> the biggest elephant-in-the-room of which is the long-term disposal problem
Which is mostly political and largely the making of the anti-nuclear lobby !
Take some of the current/recent/upcoming reactor decommissioning. When these were built (and I'm thinking about the Magnox stations) there was a plan to deal with the "quite radioactive core" and related material. Once you've taken the fuel out, the core that's left is active - but one thing that the anti-lobby forget is that you can have highly active and short half life, or long half life and not very active. Unfortunately, the public has been hoodwinked into believing the tosh that it's both highly active and long lived. SO the plan *was* simple - turn off the reactor, let it cool, take the fuel out - and just keep cooling it for a while. Before long, it's so active that you can remove all the ancillary equipment and you're left with a block the size of an average house - which you wrap in a bit of concrete.
You guard it - but really that's for show and to avoid graffiti which is about all that's going to happen.
Then after a century or so, all the highly active stuff has decayed, and it so radioactive that it's safe to walk in and pick up the blocks of graphite.
So that *was* the plan. Unfortunately, the anti-lobby has outright lied about all this, and the sheeple believe that's not acceptable. So instead of doing the simple, safe, cheap thing - we spend huge amounts of money to deal with the highly active stuff now. All that money could be spent on far more useful thing that would benefit our children, grandchildren, and so on far more than by removing a house sized non-dangerous object now !
The other problem is that people are unable to differentiate between costs that are really due to "current" production, and those that are due to poor choices made decades ago when priorities were to get nuclear up and running quickly so as to have our weapons. In hindsight some of these choices were poor - but priorities were different back then.
Anything built today is designed with decommissioning in mind - ie before anything is built, there is already a plan for how to take it apart again. This was not the case back in the 40s and 50s when the current problems were being laid down.
As to the German problem, perhaps the owners off all the fossil fuel plants should decide to switch off at the same time - just when the wind is poor and the sun has gone down. I think that might just persuade the population that renewables aren't going to keep them warm.
That's OK. They can have their cake and eat it. Nice green power in Germany, even if it doesn't work. Then get Poland to build lots of coal fired stations, and buy the leccy off them, when the wind don't blow. And have nuclear leccy from France as well. While still being 'greener-than-thou'. Perfect!
The initial policy was well-intentioned and reasonably sane (the industry happily signed up to it). It was then sabotaged by the current government pandering to the industry only to have the same government rip the new agreement in a fit of populism months later, which will lead to massive payouts to the energy companies, independent of what kind of energy is produced. There has been a political stand-off about the future which may well not get resolved by the election in September. Whichever way that turns out, nuclear is off the agenda for the life of the current plants and given the time it takes to build new ones that means no new nuclear capacity before 2030 by which time Germany will have had to find another solution anyway.
No it is simply another [godwin period].
Germans are prone to romantic flights of fancy involving their own moral excellence and innate superiority and technical ability.
Twice we have had to demonstrate to them that they were in fact not as good really, but they soon bounce back. Fortunately this time we can with willpower simply ignore them.
This problem affects the UK to a lesser extent. Many of Britains power station are running at a loss for the next few years. Despite the closure of Kingsnorth, Cockenzie, Grain, Fawley, Didcot A, Tilbury and the eventual closure of Ferrybridge C there is no profit in fossil energy generation. King Coal is makning money this year but has had a shaky few years and carbon tax will squeeze them eventually. Super efficient gas stations run at neutral and old gas stations are being thrashed to make money in the balancing market. Even efficient plant is being mothballed like Keadby. Nuclear is still making money but noone is willing or able to invest in the next gen plant. But renewables and biomass are raking it in. Drax is converting to north american wood chip, as is Lynemouth and numerous small CHP's are getting in on the action too. Everyman and his dog (read overseas soveriagn welath finds) with wonga to spare is piling into offshore wind to secure their 10% return on capital guaranteed from the british bill payers wallet. Whilst relaible efficient plant struggles because the politicans have gamed the market to reflect their own predjuidices.
Dictionary entry: Wind farm - a device powered by politicians flatulence used to harvest subsidies.
Another example of a government bringing in game changing legislation without thoroughly looking into how they are going to change the game.
If you have an industry with fairly well known customer needs and reasonable predictions for future growth such as the energy industry, making any fundamental changes that are going to take away business from certain sections of the industry means that allowances must be made for them to recover their losses. Particularly as such companies are large employers and can affect the economy if they are downsizing.
Plus of course the point of the article that Renewables are not and never will be 24/7/52 and that was clear from the beginning, they should have addressed the question of shortfall as part of the new green infrastructure and the costing thereof a long time ago.
Engineers tend to have to think about cause and effect, politicians think about votes and to end of the current term.
According to the BBC's own article Fukushima leak is a Level 1 incident, the lowest you can get and classed as a mere anomoly. So ask yourself why they the hell they even wrote a piece on it, let alone publish it on the front page.
People should also ask why there has been little reporting on how the Japanese people are trying to rebuild their lives after a disaster that claimed over 20,000 people, yet an incident that has cost no lives gets all the column inches.
So according to this story, Germany (and the rest of the world) only has solar and wind mechanisms for producing energy. With all of their huge rivers they have no hydro ? I doubt this very much.
We've all been sold so much bollox on this renewables debate that even the sanest of us cannot see that we are still being blagged stupid by the politicians and pundits.
IMHO
1. There are thousands of industries manufacturing (what I think of as) a lot of shite that we don't actually need, which are directly responsible for consuming energy in such large quantities that production on massive scale is necessary. They make huge profits from exploiting us and our "needs" and they bugger up the environment in the process, then when there's not "enough" profit in it for them, they fuck off to rape somewhere/one/thing else. We can do without a lot of this and consequently, we don't need to produce as much energy as we are being led to believe.
2. It appears that Hydro power can be generated cleanly - 24 hours a day from a slow flowing river, like the Dorset Stour, even in the summer, employing an Archimedes Screw mechanism. From a small amount of fall, It provides electricity on a small scale, for local homes and businesses.
3. I humbly suggest that our Universities, chain outlets of consumer goods and services, govermin and military institutions, as well as Cloudy providers, etc, all of whom consume vast amounts of energy in order to exploit our "needs" - should invest some of their govermin gifted dosh into the development of such plant - on their own turf, of course. AND, If they cannot produce enough, then they shouldn't be damned well expecting the rest of us to stump up for their greed and grandiose schemes.
4. People please get real on power. Stop being hoodwinked by these f*ckers, a lot of us here are supposed to be tech savvy. The picture isn't so bleedin' bleak as some foks like to make out, but capitalism as we know it - can get screwed !
Numerous renewable companies already do this, as little as 1.5m on a weir is sufficient to get renewable energy from a river. Sadly their are few such locations where the captial costs don't massively outweigh the return. Even the small projects on weirs require Government subsidy to payback.
In engineering if you have to add the word civil to the project you can add a 0 to the cost.
Don't forget that a relatively tried tested and proven solution would be to use Norway as multi-GW multi-GWh pumped storage for much of northern Europe via HVDC interconnects.
I think it's fair to say that, except for folks who want to go off-grid, the Archimedean screws and such are little more than an interesting distraction. Big is often beautiful, where electrical machines are concerned.
Several studies have shown that coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste, so in normal operation
(barring Chernobyl style accidents) your coal burning plant is the radiation risk
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.short
icon - for the stupidity of burning coal
Hydro IS included and was actually a sizeable part of it until "every hug-me greenie and teacher" startet putting solar panels on the roof. It is still the most reliable and constant of the mix. That's why it's percentage has declined over the years.
http://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/ren-Strom-D/index.php
it isn't true anyway. ALL German renewables together delivered just 18% first half of 2013, as did nuclear.
whereas the popular conception is that Germany runs on renewables and has no nuclear power, the reality is it runs on coal and has more nuclear than renewable generation overall.
It is a fascinating discussion here about renewables and nuclear. The missing point in my opinion is this. Population growth across the planet, which drives demand. Demand for resources, demand for power and heat. No matter which way they go, the demand is still going to increase. Until the birth rate across the planet is controlled, you might as well sit next to Canute on the beach.
But hey, don't worry, either nature or human insanity will step in........eventually.
i like how there is always someone pointing out hidden costs for running nuclear plants but noone talking about hidden costs running solar plants or weathercocks parks. take germany. they built vast wind farms in the north, where the wind blows, because it's good pr, but somehow neglected to build transmission network to deliver the electricity to their factories. luckily, they can route the electricity through polish and czech networks... f*cking them up, but that's collateral damage.
oh, and austria is even better case. first they built a nuclear plant, then they didn't start it, built thermal power station for burning coal instead (green) and use there czech and polish coal, which incidentally contains higher than normal amount of uranium so some inevitably escapes to atmosphere (supergreen). nowadays austrians travel abroad to visit czech and slovak nuclear plants and do a little protesting there, although they have their own perfectly good and functioning reactor in the middle of Vienna (at Tech.Uni.).
there's actually a law in austria forbidding use of nuclear energy.
fun fact: hq of International Atomic Energy Agency is in Vienna.
Sadly, the delusion that the world will end due to one's car exhaust has really hurt Germany. Electricity costs 3x the price in the US, or most anywhere else.
Being unable to sell nuclear power to the masses due to the green hysteria, the result is ineffective and episodic power from "renewable". They now have to increase prices further to subsidize backup fossil fuel generators.
This is the mess that the UK Government was pushing, though they seem to have discovered that "fracking creates carbon-free fuel"! The US officially has a pro-green Energy Secretary who could still mess it up, but she'll likely have faded into history before anything seriously damaging happens.
What a circus!
IN the first half of 2013, they made up just under 18%.
Nuclear beat them by a whisker at just over 18%.
http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/german-coal-fired-power-rises-above-50-in-first-26089429
its extraordinary how persistent green myths are isn't it?
Good article Lewis! Always fun to see when scientific and political world views collide. No matter the politicial policy, science will always win.
The interesting question is now how high electricity prices the germans will affect, before submitting to reason and nuclear power (perhaps they can be tempted with a Thorium powerplant).
Always a joy to see the greenies whinge, wail and wrestle with their consciouses over the German or UK's energy policy. Meanwhile China, and India, continue to expand their fossil fuel burning capacity. If the UK or Germany simply ceased to exist tomorrow, i bet the impact on global emissions would be negligible. So until the biggest polluters do something, then its purely masturbation for the greenies, nothing but self pleasure.
I checked my recently received electric bill from the EWZ (Electric Works for the City of Zurich), to get the breakdown on the sources of electricity, which they conveniently supply. For 2012, the energy sources were overall 66.7% renewable (composed of 64.7% hydro, 0.4% solar, 0.3% wind, 1.3% biomass), 26.6% nuclear, no fossil. Of that, 98.7% was produced in Switzerland, the remainder imported.
That shows that getting rid of their nuclear plants, which like Germany are planned to be phased out, is going to require something to replace them. Either fossil (gas turbine) or looking the other way and importing nuclear power from France. But, unlike Germany, there is a significant amount of hydro, so the problem with base load is not as acute.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
